Center for Consciousnesses Studies & Inner Transformation is pleased to announce a research project with Dr Shilpa Pandit, Associate Professor, Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Kerala.
Research in the Euro-American tradition is particularly focussed on advanced meditation states and the insights thereof about the nature of cognition and consciousness. Advances in cognitive neuroscience and neuro-phenomenology, inspired by the Buddhist world-views is trending! However, their primary interest is to ‘fit’ meditation states in the neuroscience paradigm. The search for neural correlates of advanced meditative states uses phenomenology as an instrumentality. In the research titled, ‘ Self-Transformation and Mentoring in Indic Adhyātma Traditions: A First-Person Approach to the Meditative Experiences.’ , Dr. Shilpa Pandit is proposing to examine phenomenology as an instrumentality that eventually transcends the phenomenal consciousness, through advanced meditative states and the sādhanā from the Indic perspective of first person experience. It also proposes to enquire if it is possible to transfer this insight thereafter, in transmission through Guru-Śiṣya relational dynamic? The first research question of the project is to examine whether phenomenological method is utilised by the meditators to transcend the method and the first person. The second question of the project is to examine, the processes through which this insight is transferred to the students.
The project is going to use in-depth interviews with advanced meditators and teachers in the multiple Adhyātmic lineages, in India today. The project is expected to bring about a nuanced and refined view of what advanced meditative states are understood and identified by practitioners themselves. At the Vyavahārika level the project is expected to bring out a book and a series of papers.
